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The sense of a beginning : theory of the literary opening
- Author / Creator
- Available as
- Physical
- Summary
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The Sense of a Beginning is the first comprehensive exploration of the literary opening. With a title that deliberately echoes Frank Kermode's famous book on endings, the book addresses the formal ...
The Sense of a Beginning is the first comprehensive exploration of the literary opening. With a title that deliberately echoes Frank Kermode's famous book on endings, the book addresses the formal challenge of opening lines, especially in modernism, and illustrates their significance to both literary creation and literary criticism. Niels Buch Leander's approach is wide-ranging, examining how beginnings in fiction relate to beginnings in nature, how they work from a formal and narrative point of view, how modernist self-awareness plays out in openings, and how openings have altered criticism itself through intertextuality. Drawing on examples from D.H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, Paul Valery, and more, as well as appraisals by critics like Roland Barthes and Edward Said, Leander fills a truly surprising gap in literary scholarship.
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- Creator
- Niels Buch Leander
- Format
- Books
- Language
- English
- Publication
-
- Copenhagen : Museum Tusculanum Press, [2018]
- Physical Details
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- 195 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm
- ISBNs
- 9788763543866, 8763543869
- OCLC
- ocn967843338
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Prologue: How To Begin -- Chapter 1 To Begin With The Beginning: A Cosmology Of Openings -- The Ambiguity of Genesis -- The Combinational Cabala: Mode of Creation vs. Mode of Beginning -- The Relation between Literary Openings and Cosmologies -- The Natural Beginning and the Authority of the Literary Opening -- The Infinite Regress of the Beginning -- Differentiating Origins from Beginnings -- Beginnings and the Human Sciences -- The Make-Believe of a Beginning -- Birth and the Complication of the Natural Beginning -- Conclusion: The Beginning of a Story Is the Story of a Beginning -- Chapter 2 Initiating The Contract Of Fiction: A Theory Of Openings -- The Bait and the Performativity of Literary Openings -- Homodiegetic Narration -- Heterodiegetic Narration -- The Literary Act and the Contract of Fiction -- The Taxonomy of Openings -- Exceptions to the Five Signals -- Demarcation of the Opening -- When Is an Opening "Abrupt"?: Understanding in medias res Correctly -- Perspectival Abruptness: The "Painful" Beginning -- Towards the Conclusion: The Opening as the Key to the Work -- Conclusion: Is Literature "Cooperative"? -- Chapter 3 Beginnings And Modernity: A History Of Openings -- Opening vs. Endings -- Death and the Desire for Finality -- Modernism and its Urge for Self-Definition -- Intertextuality and the Critical Challenge of Modernism -- Barthes's Beginnings: Where to Begin? -- Refusal of the Beginning: Modernist Critics Make Literature Modernist -- Said's Beginnings: The Elusive Opening -- Conclusion: Modernism as a Shift in the Communicative Model -- Chapter 4 Intertextuality Of The Novelistic Opening: A Practice Of Openings -- Paul Valery's Opening and the Disappearance of the Marquise -- Valery, Breton, and the Arbitrarity of the Novel -- The Illusory Origin of the Story -- The Opening and the Renewal of the Novel -- The Anti-Naturalist Opening from Huysmans to Queneau
- EPILOGUE: BEGINNING WITHOUT END? -- Openings as Relations to Conventions -- French vs. American criticism -- Criticism and the Opening as "Epitaph" -- A Final Word about Conventions and Cooperative Literature -- APPENDIX: APPROACHING THE TEXT: A CRITICISM OF OPENINGS -- Greek Reason and Natural Beginnings -- Pre-Modern Creation and the Incipit -- 1850 -- 1920: Modern Provocation and the Potential of Beginnings -- 1960s: The Beginnings of the Criticism of Openings -- 1970s: French Structuralism and the Open Poetics -- 1970s: Structuralism a l'americaine -- 1970s: American Endings -- 1980s: The Breakthrough of Narratology -- 1990s: Genetic Studies and the Fragile Opening -- 1990s: Openings and the Insight into History -- 1990s: Diversion with Openings: Pedagogy and Memorization -- 2000s: Openings and the Metaphor of the Millennium -- 2010s: Openings in the Era of Computers -- Structuring Critical Approaches to Openings